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For all the field’s focus on protein propagation, key questions remain unanswered. For example, do misfolded proteins truly migrate through the brain? If so, how? At the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, researchers proposed that astrocytes hand α-synuclein aggregates to each other. They also attributed specific symptoms in mice to the advance of α-synuclein aggregates from the gut to the brain. Other scientists detailed how exosomes transfer tau from one neuron to another, and tracked tau aggregation in the living brain.

As intestinal flora go about their business of digesting food and regulating immune responses, might they unwittingly accelerate Parkinson’s? In transgenic mice that are genetically susceptible to the disease, microbiota accelerated synuclein pathology in the brain as well as motor problems, according to a new study. Short-chain fatty acids pumped out by the microbes ramped up neuroinflammation in the animals’ brains, and appear to somehow exacerbate the disease. Strikingly, gut microbes derived from people with PD and transferred into the mice precipitated symptoms even faster. Researchers now aim to figure out how these microbial shenanigans in the gut cause disease in the brain.